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About Thursday of the week leading up to the third weekend of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival the hot weather broke and clouds moved in with a cold front. It started raining Friday and the rain continued all thru Saturday, with the temperature rising from the 50s to the 70s. I went in spite of the rain, because last year I had learned that the rain can bring people inside under roofs, close together, and foster encounters more intimate than those that happen outside. I went thru the gate at opening and wound up holding my umbrella over Vince Conaway's hammered dulcimer as he played at the combined bands jam that happens just after gate opening.

I sat and talked with Arachne at her booth about an hour later and during the course of the conversation she said that a special crowd comes on the rainy days. By noontime the grounds were the most populous they had been so far this season.

As you go thru the row of parking fee paying booths that are at the front of the large parking lot that the faire site shares with a rock concert amphitheater (they are unmanned and you don't have to pay at them on faire days), and drive toward the front gate of the fairegrounds, you see to the left a cluster of telephone poles with wires strung between them. There are about ten rows of ten to twelve poles in each, all no more than 20 feet from each other, all huddled together. I had often wondered what all that was for, and on Saturday morning I found out. A man in a striped orange vest asked me soon after getting past the booths if I was going to the renaissance festival, I said yes, and he directed me straight ahead and not to another mass of cars parking over by the fence in front of the poles.

I asked him what the other event was, and he told me it was "the lineman's rodeo". And sure enough, thruout the day I saw people scurrying up and down the poles like they were trying to do things as fast as possible. There were flags of all the states hung from guywires supporting the poles, along with numerous Old Glories. A few trucks with hydraulic cherry picker bucket arms went around, with men in the buckets hanging man shaped dummies near the tops of the poles. Occasionally I would see a man climb up, attach a harness to the dummy, then run a rope from the harness thru a pulley and lower the man to the ground. I guess this was a rescue drill that was one of the events in the rodeo. All of this was going on in the rain.

At about eleven in the morning I came upon Three Pints Gone and Vince Conaway playing together in the wooden mug shop instead of the outdoor stage of Hunter's Glen. The shop was empty except for them and two who worked in the shop, and I sat on the floor in front of them to listen to a song. Then some customers came in, started walking around over me and talking, so I got up and started to leave, then didn't. They were obscuring the music with their chatter, and I was getting frustrated, but thought to myself that I couldn't really bitch, because after all, it was a store not a stage.

Then they left and Vince started into "Spanish Lady" and the rest joined in, and everything jelled into a spirited performance that got me in the middle putting on a dance. It was one of those peak experiences that I occasionally get from a well-done musical bit. Then during the next song several customers came in and chaos returned, then some semblance of order returned and they all did a final song and the show ended.

I walked away thinking about how much of the faire is occasional jewels of ecstasy nestling among the more mundane pebbles. Another example came the next day (which was fair and autumnally cool, getting into the mid-70s). I came upon a high school choir from Rolla, Missouri, getting ready to perform at the Da Vinci Crane on the semicircular stage beside it. I stayed and heard an amazingly tight and spirited performance of madrigals from them. I remember how when I was in college marching band and we were on a trip and performing in the stadium of another university, everybody seemed to get all psyched up and standing waves would exist as we all put on the most together and spirited performance we had done all year, like nobody ever saw at our home and regular stadium. It seemed like the same effect here, the kids were really jazzed by being out at the faire and wanting to put on the best show they could.

But the Da Vinci crane is in quite possibly the lousiest place in the whole shire for a stage. Only about 100 feet away is the jousting field, and not only were there loud cheers from the crowd there and an announcer's voice over the only loudspeakers on the grounds, but also trumpet fanfares and tympani rumblings. In the other direction someone would occasionally succeed in ringing the bell in the he-man hammer booth also nearby, and there was a woman out in the path to the side hawking pictures rather loudly. I had to pick out the sound of the choir in between all of this.

Both days I watched the Press a Wench contest, where a woman stood at attention with her hands down by her hips made into fists, and a man contestant had to place his hand under them and then try to pick the woman up by bending his arms up with his biceps (like the press movement in weightlifting). All of the men succeeded in doing so with the normal sized women who were there (one of them one of the cast members singing, "I fe-el dainty. I fe-el dainty" to the tune of Nyah-na nyah-na nyah nyah"). Then they announced the "special part of the contest", and a big dude 6 feet and a few tall and over 250 pounds came out, with an apron over his chest that looked like a bodice with the tops of two pink playground balls visible behind it came swishing out. Some took one look and turned away, one tried and just grunted, but there was this one big husky black man who was able to do it. I was wondering if I should have entered up until this.

Both days of the fourth weekend were beautiful, sunshine and highs in 70s. I wore my nobles on Sunday, showing them to KCRF for the first time.

Saturday I looked at the program and saw three (Sat. only)s, which meant they were probably amateur groups, and remembering the choir from Rolla, I spent most of the day listening to high school choirs, returning for second times with two of them. I headed straight for the Da Vinci Crane, and this day a typical Kansas south wind started to prevail, which blew most of the sound from the jousts the other way. I also got to behold them two times in the Wildwood Chapel, which is a far better venue for a madrigal choir. One of the high schools was in Lee's Summit, Mo., and the other in Overland Park, Ks, the two most affluent suburbs in the Kansas City area, and the kids were overwhelmingly white and showing the benefits of expensive training. The other was from inside Kansas City, and a third of the faces were black. They weren't as polished in their technique, and they even had to restart a number, but they still showed quite a lot of spirit. It was all in the main five half-hours of amazingly tight and together harmonies.

I now look for amateur groups and even start following schedules and watching my watch to catch them, because the best of them are the best of faire. There was an excellent group of Spanish dancers the previous weekend, doing some bits in 11/4 time.

Sunday I spent in butterfly mode, flitting around and landing in any place that attracted my interest.

Somebody started scrubbing the thrones in the Royal Privies, and the general bathroom situation is now much improved over last year.

I am amazed to report that two complete weekends passed without anyone asking me if I had lost the bet, so the overall count remains at three

- Butterfly Bill

"Greetings, milady...or is it milord?...or..um...."
RenGeek with pewter computer imputer
IWG reject
"So did you lose the bet?"..."No, I won it, he bet me I wouldn't"
First Rogu'ench of Renntopia
Solarus Juvenillius Pastritis of Sarcastica. He who Grouches
while Biting the Wax Tadpole.
"possunt vincere nothi solum si facetias tuas a te tollunt"
http://www.grapevine.net/~butterflybill/BB.htm

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